Registrations are open! Show up or you owe me a beer.

But seriously, Laurent, Sylvain, and Laurent (2), and Michelle are doing a great job with this, particularly since running a bilingual event is a bit more complicated than your usual Podcamp. It should be pretty damn cool.

Alive in Baghdad correspondent Ali Shafeya was killed on December 14th, details are still coming in. He was 24, survived by mom and sister.

and:

but is that worth even one human’s life? We are still not 100% sure its not the assignment we gave that killed him.

and:

We’ve raised $90, can anyone else help Ali’s family pay for the funeral? his brothers and father are all dead. survived by one sis & mother

and:

you can make a donation to suport his family to smallworldnews@gmail.com via paypal, please note that it is for Ali’s family.

People: This is one of your own. Donate now.

1. Search Engine: Full of awesome ideas, incredibly well-produced, etc. Altogether favourite show right now. (Thanks to Mitch for the reco.)
2. The Nothing Show: Tim Coyne and Dave Delaney talk about whatever shows up on their twitter lists. I know this sounds idiotic, but it’s fucking hilarious. Just trust me.
3. DYKC: Do You Know Clarence is under 10 minutes of just straight talk. Short podcasts have been having their way with me these days, so Clarence has my respect for producing good content without needing to listen for 45 minutes.
4. Creepy Sleepy Show: Dan Patterson has been doing this forever and hasn’t gotten enough respect. It’s the only political show I can actually listen to. The latest show was over an hour, which breaks my “short podcast” rule, but it was still really good.

I know I should have five right now, but I’m in a kind of rush, so four will have to do. And since I’ve named five people already in this post, those will be the people I tag: Mitch, Dave, Tim, Clarence, and Dan. Move it!

I know this may seem like a conspiracy theory to you guys, but the other day we realized something at the office.

The iTunes Store on the iPod Touch… well, it has no podcasting section.

Anyway, after a bit of discussion, we kind of began wondering– is Apple flushing podcasting? I mean, they definitely don’t profit off it, so with limited screen resolution on the Touch, it makes sense that they’d kick it off. But is this telling us something more? I’d love to know what you think.

Now, Dave Winer started working on a podcatcher. Should you care? Definitely.

Apple is now the barrier to entry. Though podcasting is a space where we wanted to wipe out the gatekeeper, we’ve handed the keys to Apple, instead– a company notorious for keeping secrets and suing bloggers. How did this happen?

Meanwhile, there are other podcatchers in the shadow of iTunes that give over 60 subscribers EVERY DAY. Nobody knows about them because Apple keeps your drooling over the next gadget to impress your friends with.

iTunes is like the sun– it blinds you if you stare too long. Stop focusing on them, and you’ll see: there are opportunities everywhere.

How to subscribe.

How the rich control your education, being a cyborg, and the chessboard of life.

Relevant links: Famous for 15 people, Chat with a rich kid.

[http://m.podshow.com/media/170/episodes/85532/inoveryourhead-85532-10-31-2007.mp3]

Direct download link

I don’t know anything about Podtech (I don’t think anybody does), but I just read on Andrew Baron’s blog that Podtech is in sinking and Scoble may be out (the original tweet-based rumour being here). Who does this leave as the premiere audio/video content company? Podshow. Who’da thunk it.

If this is true, it means there’s going to be a lot of doubt going around the content-creation space (audio, video, etc.) in the next little while. Maybe less money, who knows.

The individual creators, on the other hand, are in a stronger position than ever. As the networks fail, the creators can continue to do their work for less money than a company ever could, getting little sponsorships along the way to keep them alive. They’re f’n cockroaches, and can thrive in the tiniest of niches with no problem.

I’ll be offline for the next fourteen hours (on a ferry in the middle of the Atlantic), so I won’t know how this will pan out, but I bet there are interesting times ahead for folks like us.

BTW, I’m calling it right now: Scoble, next evangelist for Facebook.

While I understand the need to get viewers as much as any producer, getting an attractive girl to do it can sometimes seem like the cheap way out. With Rocketboom, JetSetShow, and Geek Brief, I feel like they’re still part of the community– Zadi, Cali, etc., are more than just hosts. But the more of these I see, the more cynical I become. In some cases (iTunes link), we use women in the iconography, even if there are no women in the show!

These tactics are cheap and base. Our community is better than this– we began with principles of subversion and being different than old media, so why are we emulating it? Are we the hippies of our generation, ending up in top-floor penthouses, wondering what happened to what we believed in?

What Dave doesn’t realize is that it is in the nature of early influencers’ attention to be transitory. The reason they jump from one app to another is precisely because they are early influencers, and people pay attention to them precisely because they try things before anyone else.

In fact, I could even go so far as to say that, if they stop trying the new and shiny, attention to them will dwindle.

What Slusher has done (by unsubscribing) is exercise the power he does have, which is attention. If attention is what causes these web apps to become popular, it is also the thing that causes early influencers power to expand– attention is the very nature of power on the web.

So if you’re waiting for your web app to get picked up by Scoble, Arrington, or anyone else, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Even if you are the new Facebook, it is in their very nature to drop the old as the new and shiny comes along.

It happens in Hollywood, it happens in electronics, and it happens on the web. One day, you and your app, your weblog, or your podcast, will be over.

Start working on your next thing NOW.

This lucky accident could revolutionize podcast sponsorship. (I sure hope it does!)

Your podcast may only have 100 listeners, but no matter your niche, I’d be willing to bet your listenership includes some high-ups with decision-making ability.

Personally, if I found the right audience for a client, I’d drop $250 for an episode, easy. All you’d have to do was reach me, and you’ve had that ability all along– it comes built into the show you do.

So get to it.

If you’ve seen me at a conference, you’ll notice I very rarely talk about “voice,” “authenticity,” or any other subject you would consider to be related to my show. Instead, you hear me talk about marketing, about metrics, about Google. Why?

Truth? I enjoy being under the radar. No one inspects what I do. I learn by experience and see what works, take mental notes, and give out little gems when I can.

Also? There’s something to be said about the amateur. I have successfully managed to become a podcasting/blogging professional, but keep my show related to things I am not a professional at, and I love that. I can continue to be the trash talking, wise cracking asshole I began as, while changing everything else about my life. I’m proud of that accomplishment.

Besides, there are so many great marketing shows out there: Six Pixels of Separation, Marketing Over Coffee, and Managing the Gray, among others. Go visit them, learn what you need, and whatever’s still unclear, go see these guys. You’ll be all set up in no time. You don’t need me. :)

Neil Gorman had everyone crying from laughter during his presentation.

The Seven Plagues of Modern Man, new tattoos, New York and Toronto are piece of shit cities. Etc.

[http://m.podshow.com/media/170/episodes/85531/inoveryourhead-85531-10-31-2007.mp3]

It’s strange to be on your own schedule, working at pretty much your own pace, and on own your own goals, the whole time. It’s in massive contrast to the nine-to-five lifestyle that my parents lived, and are still living as a matter of fact. How will it impact the way I feel about my life, and my achievements, longterm? I don’t know.

It’s a pretty interesting lifestyle, though. I make podcasts, blog, have one great client, and otherwise work on whatever I decide I want to. But it reminds me of what Tim Ferriss said at SXSW this year (a good dude despite his somewhat sketchy front page)– once you’re not packed with work every day, you need to fill it with other things that create value for you. This is still hard for me– I’m still having trouble, but I intend to work it out.

What does this mean for me? For those of you that didn’t know, my podcast is/was syndicated onto satellite radio every Friday, which was pretty cool. It led me to produce shows every week, which was a nice challenge. The ability to do shorter shows will be nice though– they were previously constrained to being at least 24 minutes due to the slot I was filling.

More than anything, though, it was nice to be able to impress non-webbies with the fact that I did real radio. Never mind that it’s a dying industry, and that radio people are generally known to be the lowest on the showbiz ladder (til podcasters showed up). Radio impresses regular people. Me telling them that my show played on the station next to Howard Stern’s had a certain value too.

At the same time, though, I’ve always been more devoted to the web than to terrestrial radio, and always believed the audience was coming my way, not theirs. I believe even more in the web than I did in July of 2006, when I began. So, all in all, I’m a little disappointed, but this was by no means as good as it’s going to get.

More than anything, I want to impress upon everyone my deep respect for people like PW Fenton and Brian Noe, who persevered with me to create episodes every week. I’ve really come to believe in myself a lot because of those guys, they’re stand-up dudes. So cheers, and onto new things. :)

Scott Sigler‘s novel Ancestor, out today on paperback, has just hit #7 on the Amazon Top 100. It just sold out– and I got the last copy. :)

What a great world we live in that this dude, one of the hardest working people in our industry, can reach the same levels as Harry Potter through podcasting. I love it.

Today is Bum Rush the Charts. With your help, we will push one independent, podsafe track to #1 on the iTunes charts, and help send one lucky kid to college.

How can you help? Go here and follow the instructions. Half the proceeds from this will be going to a scholarship fund. And if you already own the song, gift it to a friend as well! You’ll be making your vote count twice.

Thanks for your help!

Something weird is happening here at SXSW. Videoblogging is well-represented here, but podcasts, definitely not. I don’t see any huge podcasters either on panels, or in the audience. 2007 is definitely about video, and if you’re here, you see it clear as day.

Is audio over?

Podcasts will always have their place, but I do think audio is/was quick to be replaced as the exciting medium. We’re already in such a visual culture– it seems inevitable.

Radio is still a huge industry, and podcasts will be too– this, despite all of the options for television, film, and other visual means of communication. If you love audio, there is still a place for you in podcasting. But the opportunity, I think, isn’t as huge as it was.

As a business, I suspect that getting into video would likely be smarter than simply having a podcast. That said, some ideas are better expressed via audio than video. So, making a decision based on the audience you want or have is wiser than basing it on what’s hot right now.

I suspect that, in the future, the MVPs in this space will simply be media producers, not just podcasters or vloggers. Having some hands-on experience in both will likely be very helpful in the coming years– especially for those who, like me, live and breathe web media.